


Brighton and Venice

by earlybloomingparentheses



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Author will die on the sword of this ship, Getting Together, M/M, Old Friends, Post-defeat of Grindelwald, WWII era, with lots of complicated history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 06:32:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11285616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlybloomingparentheses/pseuds/earlybloomingparentheses
Summary: Elphias takes in a deep, shaky breath, forcing his heart to stop racing. “No. Albus Dumbledore is—is who knows where, celebrating his defeat over the Dark Lord Grindelwald, not—not on a run-down street in Brighton in the off-season, knocking on the door of a man he hasn’t seen in fifteen years!”Elphias Doge and Albus Dumbledore were the closest of friends at Hogwarts. Things haven't been right between them in a very long time.





	Brighton and Venice

 

_May 1945_

Night falls fast and cold in Brighton tonight. A bitter wind sweeps in from the sea, whistling through the giant coils of barbed wire stretched along the beach, making its way through deserted lanes and under cracks in the doors of the town’s sleeping houses. The city feels abandoned, empty—it’s the darkness, of course, blackout curtains on every window and not a streetlamp lit for years now. And yet on the other hand it _is_ different tonight; not quite so bleak, not quite so desolate; perhaps the solitary traveler making his way south through narrow streets can feel something prickling in the air: a sense of cautious optimism, the collective holding of breath as all of Brighton—all of Britain—dares to hope that maybe, finally, the end is truly near.

Three days have passed since Grindelwald’s defeat and two since the suicide of his Muggle puppet, Adolf Hitler. The war isn’t over—neither the wizards’ nor the Muggles’, though really they’re one and the same—but both the Dark wizards and the Axis powers are teetering on the brink of collapse. The aging man in the ramshackle house overlooking the sea is maintaining the magical defenses along this stretch of coastline, his duty since 1939, because one can’t be too careful, but he too shelters a tiny flame of hope in his breast that soon, perhaps even very soon, the world will be safe once more.

And yet when the solitary traveler makes his way up the cliff toward the sea-facing house, the man inside stiffens, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. A low hum emanates through the damp rooms: a stranger approaches.

Three raps on the front door. Raising his wand, the wizard advances carefully down the corridor. He’s about to whisper a spell of revealing, but then a voice comes low and clear from the other side of the door and he stops in his tracks, suddenly as immobile as if he’d just been Stunned.

“Elphias,” the voice says, deep and with an unmistakable rumble in the throat. “It’s Albus.”

Elphias Doge staggers backwards. “No,” he says fiercely. “It can’t be.”

“It most certainly is.”

The voice is light, as always, but Elphias swears he detects a bit of a strain underneath. No surprise, if it’s truly him.

But surely that’s not possible.

“You—” He takes in a deep, shaky breath, forcing his heart to stop racing. “No. Albus Dumbledore is—is who knows where, celebrating his defeat over the Dark Lord Grindelwald, not—not on a run-down street in Brighton in the off-season, knocking on the door of a man he hasn’t seen in fifteen years!”

“From what I understand, it’s always the off-season these days,” the voice replies mildly. “Barbed wire does put a crimp in one’s bathing, don’t you think?”

Elphias is silent, half of him still alert to the dangerous possibility that the man outside is an imposter and half of him already slipping into anger at Albus’ levity, inappropriate now as always.

“Elphie,” says Albus’ voice, and Elphias’ breath catches at the sudden familiarity, “on the day you and I met, when you were still tinged green from Dragon Pox, we were about to be Sorted, and you leaned over and whispered in my ear that you hoped you would be in Hufflepuff, because no matter what anyone said, you believed hard work and loyalty were the most important qualities in a wizard.”

Elphias lets out a breath, feeling suddenly limp and loose-limbed. He rouses himself a second later and hurries down the corridor. A few waves of his wand and several murmured incantations and the door swings open.

Albus Dumbledore is silhouetted against the dark sky and the dark sea, no more stooped and aged than he had been the last time Elphias laid eyes on him.

“Well, come in, then,” Elphias mutters, his eyes skittering away from the taller man’s. “The war might be nearing an end but it’s still a poor idea to linger on doorsteps these days.”

Albus steps inside. Elphias shuts the door and then hurries down the corridor again. It’s not really a conscious decision; he’s five feet away before he realizes where his feet have taken him.

“Sitting room’s there.” He points, not making eye contact. “I’ll make tea.”

Once in the kitchen, he places his forehead against the cool wall and breathes deeply. _You knew this day would come, Elphias Doge_ , he tells himself, _you work for the Ministry, you’re part of every war resistance effort he is—did you really think you’d manage never to see him again?_

There was a reason he’d volunteered for the post in Brighton, after all. 

He pours water into the kettle and waits for it to boil and tries not to catalogue every meeting he’s had with his former best friend since 1899, the last time things were right between them. Albus is always courteous and Elphias, well, he’s never been one for confrontation, he never became rude or outwardly angry, and yet it was obvious that the space between them was as impenetrable as the darkness created by the imported magical powder Elphias had once sampled in Spain—on his Grand Tour, all by himself.

He takes the kettle into the other room.

“No sugar, I’m afraid,” he says, his voice coming out stiff and wrong. “I’m at the end of my rations.”

Albus inclines his head and takes the cup. Neither of them drinks. They sit in silence for several long minutes, the only sound the ticking of the grandfather clock and the low crash of the waves outside the blacked-out windows.

“Why are you here, Albus?” Elphias says finally.

The man’s brow quirks upwards, towards his head of long hair, the rich auburn now streaked liberally with grey. “Can’t a man visit an old friend on a whim?”

Elphias bites the inside of his cheek. He says nothing, but gives Albus a long, unwavering stare.

Albus’ blue eyes flicker away.

“Those…celebrations, as you put it. They grew a bit—wearisome.”

In the old days, Elphias would have accepted that answer, accepted his friend’s need to be enigmatic, to keep his own counsel. Now it’s 1945, Elphias is sixty-four, and he’s just survived his second World War. He shakes his head.

“So you came to see me because you were tired of the parties?”

Albus looks down at his long, thin fingers, curled around the teacup in his lap. They are more lined, now, than they used to be, but Elphias thinks he is holding up well for a man his age.

He sets the tea aside and when he speaks again, his voice is empty of inflection.

“I wanted to be with someone who knows I am not a hero.”

Elphias doesn’t flinch, not quite. “Of course you are a hero,” he says, his tone equally flat.

“Elphias.” Albus looks briefly pained. “Please.”

“You defeated Grindelwald. You’ve saved the wizarding world. Heroic, Albus, as always.”

“I should have confronted him sooner,” Albus says softly, and the streak of raw honesty in his voice is something Elphias would have given anything to hear, once upon a time.

But now it rankles. Feels false. Feels like a way to make Elphias meet Albus’ blue eyes, to make him speak.

He won’t.

“I wanted to kill him.”

“Albus,” Elphias says, shocked. Eyes locking on his friend’s, lips opening of their own accord.

“I spoke of justice,” Albus says, “of making him account for his actions in front of the whole world. But that isn’t what stayed my hand, Elphias. I didn’t kill him,” Albus breathes, “because I wanted to.”

Elphias’ eyes—the traitors—are still fixed on Albus’. He feels a weight pressing on his chest.

“I hate him,” Albus says simply, the burden of that word—that word on his lips—pushing down on Elphias’ lungs, his throat. “I wanted him dead, and I wanted to be the one to do it. Not only because of my sister, Elphias. Not only that.”

Elphias wishes that Albus would stop saying his name.

“You are the only person in the world who knows how I felt about him. That is why I came here tonight.”

“And that is also why,” Elphias says, finding his tongue again, though his chest still feels tight and constricted, “I am the one person you should never have come to.”

His voice is trembling. The unfairness of Albus confessing this to him, the sheer selfishness of it—Elphias can hardly make himself swallow it.

“You must know,” Elphias says, after Albus doesn’t reply, “you must have known, back then, what _I_ felt about _you_.”

There. He’s said it. After all these years, he’s spoken the words aloud. And they don’t send the world spiraling apart, don’t make the walls cave in; they don’t even make Albus get up and walk away. Instead, in his old friend’s blue eyes, something flickers, and Albus looks down at his long lined fingers.

“I didn’t,” Albus says. “Not then.”

Elphias startles them both by laughing. “Please, Albus. Don’t lie to me. I was—I couldn’t have been more obvious. Looking at you with those big admiring eyes, spouting off to anyone who would listen about your brilliance, following you around like your shadow.” Elphias can’t keep the self-contempt from his voice. He’s had long years to remember all the times he’d been called “sidekick,” and “sycophant,” and “lapdog.”

“It was obvious to me only that you were my friend, Elphias,” Albus says, looking at him seriously. “A true and loyal friend.” He pauses. “But more than that—”

Albus sighs. He runs a hand wearily over his eyes, and for the first time that night Elphias can see the toll the last few weeks and years have taken on him.

“I was brilliant, Elphias, but that is not the same as self-aware. It wasn’t until Gellert—until _he_ came that I…” he pauses again, “that I understood. He woke me up. He made me feel things—want things—but it wasn’t until he kissed me for the first time that I realized what it all was. What was happening between us. And what had been happening, for all those years at Hogwarts, between you and I.”

It’s like an _Impedimenta_ to the chest, every word out of Albus’ mouth, but the last sentence knocks the wind right out of him.

“Grindelwald,” he chokes out, “you needed Gellert Grindelwald to show you that—that you—that _I_ —”

“He was forceful,” Albus says. “He was…a force. It didn’t occur to him, or didn’t matter, that others might not respond in the way he desired them to. He didn’t hesitate to go after what he wanted.”

Tears of anger, of shame, spring to Elphias’ eyes. He blinks them, stinging, away. “I went alone to Greece because you told me to,” he says, rising rapidly and moving to the blacked-out window. “I went on the Grand Tour alone because you insisted, you wouldn’t let me stay with you—”

“My mother’s death was not your trouble, Elphias, and I didn’t want you to lose the opportunity—”

“But I lost you,” Elphias says. He turns away from the window and back towards Albus. “I went away and he came to Godric’s Hollow and when I returned for Ariana’s funeral you were a different person. You would barely look at me, Albus.”

“I know,” Albus says softly. “I’m sorry.”

They had fought, after that, a difficult, obscure fight in which Albus told Elphias the whole story about Gellert Grindelwald’s plans and their love affair and Grindelwald’s betrayal and the duel and his sister’s death and yet somehow, somehow they never spoke of _Elphias_ —what he felt, what Albus felt for him, where the two of them might go now. Elphias waited, longer than he should have, for Albus to return to the man he’d been before, to turn to Elphias for comfort and solidarity as he always had in the past. But Albus hadn’t.

“How long,” Albus says now, hesitatingly, a strange uncharacteristic note of uncertainty in his voice, “when did you realize, Elphias, that what you felt for me was—was—”

“Love?” Elphias looks at Albus for a long moment, until finally Albus nods. “I can’t remember not knowing I was in love with you.”

Shocked, Albus’ eyes meet his. “We were only children when we met—”

“I grew up loving you,” Elphias says simply. “There wasn’t a moment of revelation for me. I understood that this was not supposed to happen. I understood that I was different. But that never stopped me from knowing what I wanted. It couldn’t, I think. Nothing could have.”

Albus’ eyes are shining. “Oh, Elphias—you might have said—”

He reaches a hand towards Elphias’ and Elphias pulls away sharply.

“Don’t blame this on me, Albus,” he says, choking with the injustice of it.

“No.” Albus rises and, very carefully, puts a hand on Elphias’ shoulder. Elphias doesn’t turn away, but he doesn’t turn towards him, either. “I never would. I’m sorry that I…took so long.”

Gently, Elphias extracts himself from Albus’ grasp. He picks up the teacups and saucers from the table, moving towards the door to the hall.

He stops. “I was going to, you know,” he says quietly. “Go after what I wanted. I had an image of us in Venice—on the Grand Canal, in a gondola, you dressed all in white, lying spread out on your back and staring lazily up at the blue sky and I would lean over and whisper in your ear…Well. Not an image, really. An intention. A plan.”

Behind him, Albus doesn’t speak, doesn’t move, and after a long moment Elphias walks into the hallway and leaves him behind.

In the kitchen, he washes up. There’s a strangling knot growing somewhere between his lungs and his throat and he feels the weight of the evening coming down hard around him; but he thinks it might be like the war, the worst of it just before the end. Perhaps after this, after the last onslaught arrives and blasts him skinned and raw it will move along and Elphias, finally, will be able to put this all to rest.

“Elphie,” Albus says from the doorway, and Elphias drops a teacup. It shatters all over the floor, shards skidding across the tile.

“Don’t,” Elphias says, as Albus raises his wand automatically to spell it back together. “Just leave it.”

Albus nods. But then he steps forward.

“Leave it,” Elphias says again, more quietly.

Albus puts a hand out and touches Elphias’ cheek.

“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry that every time we’ve met since then I’ve said nothing. I’m sorry he had to be gone for me to talk to you about this. I’m a selfish man, Elphias, and I think that’s something else that only you know about me.”

Elphias swallows. Albus’ hand on his cheek feels warm, much warmer than it ought.

“May I ask you for something else selfish, Elphias?”

“I’ve never been able to stop you before,” Elphias says weakly, his eyes stuck to Albus’.

“Would you allow me to try and be your friend again?”

Elphias breathes in a long breath, through his nose, and feels Albus’ fingertips still burning against his skin. “What could you possibly want with me now, Albus?”

“You’ve never quite trusted I truly cared for you, Elphias. Even as a friend. Never trusted that I could think of you as an equal.”

“You’re wrong,” Elphias says. “I did trust you, once.” He presses his fingers quickly against Albus’ and then moves his hand away. “Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Fine. Be my friend, if you can. I’ve only been waiting for you, after all.”

“Elphie,” Albus says, and then draws Elphias into a tight embrace. Startled, he inhales sharply, and after a moment of Albus’ arms squeezing tight around his waist he lets his palms rest gently on Albus’ back.

“Friends,” Albus breathes in his ear.

“Friends,” Elphias confirms. Despite his better judgment, despite everything that’s happened. “We can be friends.”

 

 

 

_May 1946_

A year later, under a brilliant spring-blue sky with the sun beating down on the calm water and the bridges and buildings and boats, a gondola drifts along. The gondolier dips his long thin oar into the water as the two aging men in his boat stretch out their long legs and look lazily upwards. Venice, liberated by the Allies a year before, is alive with people: snatches of song and joyful shouts drift over the water. A breeze ruffles the men’s shirts and unsettles their hats. The shorter, beardless man laughs, and his lither, longer companion looks at him with a twinkle in his blue eye.

The twinkle turns suddenly serious as the taller man surveys his friend. With a flick of a glance to the gondolier, who is humming obliviously as he rows, the man leans in close and whispers something in the other’s ear.

“Elphie,” Albus says quietly, “tell me. Is it too late?”

Elphias tips his head towards him, sunshine on his face. “No, Albus,” he replies, “I don’t think it is.”

Wordlessly, Albus clasps Elphias’ shoulder. Elphias brushes his fingers across Albus’ hand: a light touch, but it ripples through Elphias like a wave, and for one breathless moment he’s a teenager again, unscarred and brimming with hope and so, so in love.


End file.
